Can we take our children's behavior less personally?

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In my last post, I pointed out that many of my clients express a fear that they are the only ones who are having trouble managing their children’s behavior in public and in private. “Everyone else seems to be doing it better!”  In reality, all parents struggle with how to teach their children appropriate behavior, and how to manage it when their children misbehave.

Part of what makes the whole process so hard, is that as parents, we feel so very vulnerable and judged about the way we are parenting.  We are all human, and what could be more sensitive than the way our children are behaving. After all, we gave birth to them, or adopted them, or are fostering them.  Often they look quite a lot like us physically!  We think about what we were like at their age, and how our parents approached our behavior.  And other than our partners, they are the people we love and care about most in the world.  And they know how to push our buttons!

Also, we are not making it up: people are judgmental, a separate but interesting topic in itself!  These children are so precious to us; we can’t help but take heir behavior very personally. We are a part of the same culture as those outside that may judge, as we result, we can end up being the harshest critics and judges of ourselves.

How do we cope with all this: do right by our children, find ways to not take their behavior so personally, and not get overwhelmed by feelings of shame and embarrassment of feeling so exposed?  These are complex dilemmas, and there are no simple strategies to address them.  However, we are ahead of the game just by being aware that all of this is in play in our day to day parenting, and exploring ways to address them.

Start with finding ways not to take our children’s behavior so personally!  When my son was three, my husband and I were out in the front yard of our home, and there was a man across the street mowing his lawn.  My son looked at my husband and said, “I hate you!” My husband and I were both a little shocked, and took a few moments to respond.  In the interim my son quickly recanted, “ I don’t hate you, I hate the man across the street mowing the lawn.”  My husband and I still joke about it to this day.

Toddlers are complicated little beings, and they are exploring who they are, how they are separate from their parents, and how to understand their emotions.  From birth, children are involved in those explorations, differently, in each developmental stage. 

Babies aren’t being manipulative when they are hungry and crying to be fed, or changed, or held.  They have needs, and they are dependent on us to meet those needs.  As they grow, to a year old or so, there is a dance around whether they need to have all their needs met immediately, or whether they can develop an ability to soothe themselves.  As they are more mobile, and more able to communicate verbally, we begin to have to set limits for their safety, and make more demands on them to wait a bit, for what they want.

Suddenly, there is more room for parents to interpret a child’s behavior as manipulative, to fear “spoiling them”, to be frustrated, angry, or disappointed by their behavior. It’s a hard transition: there is a tug around the child being dependent and independent for children and for parents.

An added complication to this dynamic is that the way healthy children learn these developmental tasks by testing out limits.  And we, as parents, are the ones being tested.  Often that feels pretty challenging; it becomes hard not to interpret their behavior as something they are consciously doing to make our lives difficult.  Additionally, all this happens in a very public way, hence the vulnerability and opportunity for parents to feel shame.

I believe that children are not as a rule, manipulative, or trying to give us a hard time.  They are trying to figure out who they are, and how the world works.  We get the daunting task of being their teachers.

A fundamental concept in trying to de-personalize our children’s behavior is the understanding that they are just trying to do their job. If we can manage to reframe their behavior in this context, it can help towards not feeling like they are purposely trying to make our lives miserable!

This blog is an attempt at building a “middle ground” parenting approach. 

One of the first, underlying steps is becoming aware that we need to understand how we are affected by fear of judgments from outsiders, and our own self-judgment.   We can understand the process of child development in the context of a child learning appropriate behavior by testing limits, and by our setting, and consistently enforcing those limits.  

We can’t control how and when are children test us, but with thought, and guidance we can come up with strategies and approaches in which to ease the tension of this natural process for ourselves and hence for them.

And we can be kind and compassionate to our children and equally as importantly: to ourselves. Outsiders can be judgmental, but this understanding of child development can be a part of learning to not judge ourselves harshly, to not blame ourselves for natural child behavior, to know what we can and cannot control.  

The first step in this, as in most things, is to be conscious that taking our children’s behavior personally, interpreting it as intentionally geared to annoy us, stops us from being as effective as we can be in teaching our children appropriate behavior.

Why do other people’s children seem better behaved?

Just this week, in my parent coaching practice, four sets of parents separately said to me, “When I see other families, at the restaurant or at the mall; it looks like they have it under control.  My child/children are screaming, running around, crying, and bouncing off the wall like little monkeys (or some other such mammalian creature).  Other people’s kids are sitting still, eating politely, conversing and behaving perfectly!” 

I am a parent and I know that in the moment, that is how it really feels.  We usually can’t identify what it is we feel, but often, at the root of it is shame.  In those moments we feel like we are bad parents, and that makes us feel like we are bad people.

Shame is a really uncomfortable, painful emotion and it’s natural to try to push it away. So we understandably replace the shame with depression or with anger at our children, for putting us in this situation. As a result, unintentionally, we can lash out at them, cause them to feel shame and that they are bad people, as opposed to people that behaved badly.

In reality, if so many of the people I talk to feel this way then it could not possibly be true that everyone else is “parenting better”.  When our child is screaming in a restaurant, or having a tantrum in a supermarket, we worry we are being judged; we feel embarrassed and alone.  In that moment, it seems like we are the only one who experiences this behavior with our children.  Yet most of us do.

Children are learning how to behave appropriately at home and in public from when they are babies.  One of the prominent ways children do this is by testing.  They will try out behaviors to see how we react and how other people react.  By doing this, and dealing with the repercussions, they learn what they can and can’t do behaviorally.  This testing is their job.  It is our job to set appropriate limits, and use positive discipline, so they will learn those lessons about appropriate behavior.  But it is important for us to do it in a way that is not shaming for them.  And it is important for us not to feel shame because they are testing.  It is not a reflection on our parenting skill or lack thereof, it is not because we are bad, or did something wrong, it is what children do.

So the first step is to try to remind yourself, that you are not alone and that all parents experience this.  If grandparents or parents of older children say their children didn’t do that, it’s just that they’ve forgotten.  They blocked out the embarrassing experiences and remember mostly the positive or funny ones. (That’s a comforting fact as well!)

If there are uncompassionate people, forgetful of their own experience, or haven’t spent much time around children -that give you a look, or a comment, or a judgmental whisper aside to their companions, we have to develop ways to let that go.  They are the ones with the problem.  The way we feel about ourselves and the way we respond to our children is so much more important than the unfair judgments of passers by.

If we become filled with shame, we feel bad about ourselves and internalize it.  Or we get angry and lash out at the children.  It ends up hurting them and us.

We do need to deal with it when children misbehave in private or in public.  If a child is having a tantrum we need to try to pick them up, and without lecturing or long speeches, with as much calmness as we can muster, and get out of the restaurant, mall, birthday party.  If a child is misbehaving in a place of worship or making loud noise in a quiet situation like a wedding, lecture or movie, we didn’t do anything wrong as parents. They were just being children, and we need to remove them from the situation.

Some children are naturally more compliant and need to do less testing, either in private, in public, or both.  This doesn’t mean they are better or that the children who test more are worse.  Everyone is born hardwired with a certain temperament.  We can’t control that.  But we can control how we react, and how we develop strategies to approach effective, non-shaming discipline.  I will go into more depth limit setting and positive discipline techniques in future posts.

First we listen...then....

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Listening is the way we get our cues to who our child is, how they are doing, and what they need.  It is how we can behave compassionately to our children, and teach them to behave compassionately towards others as well.  Listening is also the way we diffuse heated situations so the child can calm down enough to be able to problem solve. 

Inevitably situations will arise wherein children misbehave: they may have tantrums, try to do something unsafe, not put away their toys, etc.  The problems can be anywhere on a spectrum from small and mild to large and dangerous. We teach our children appropriate ways to behave towards themselves, others, inside the family, and outside the family, by using limit setting.  After empathetic listening, limit setting is the next tool in our parenting repertoire.

I have often turned to The Explosive Child, a book by physician Dr. Ross Greene, when parents are having a hard time with their children’s behavior.  Dr. Greene wrote the book to address especially challenging behavior from children who are often diagnosed with psychological or behavioral problems.  I have found most of the concepts in the book to be relevant to parenting and setting limits in general.

Dr. Greene posits and emphasizes that children do well, if they can!  They want to please their parents, receive attention from their parents, and if they can behave well, they will.  If they are not behaving well, something is getting in their way.  They may not know how to do what they are being asked to do, they might be having trouble managing strong feelings or they may have trouble with impulse control. There can be many sources of the difficulty. 

I am not suggesting that therefore we should allow misbehavior, or not set limits.  That is exactly what we need to do.  We can set those limits, and address those challenging behaviors in the context of teaching the child the skills they need to learn, and figuring out what is getting in their way.

In limit setting it is really important for actions to match words.  If parents say you can’t have ice cream this afternoon, and after children plead and cajole parents say yes; they will learn that "no" does not mean "no".  If you ask them to do a task, putting away toys, putting out the garbage and they say, “I will,” but never do it, and you lecture and nag, and then do it yourself, they will learn that they don’t really have to do the task.

If there is one word that is most important in limit setting it is consistency.  It is important that limits be set consistently and consequences be meted out consistently.

Children will test rules.  That is their job.  It is the way they discover the boundaries of acceptable behavior and whether there are limits in place to keep them safe.  They start testing at two years old and keep on going right through their teens.

We don’t need to punish children for testing; but we need to respond to them with very clearly stated rules and consequences if they don’t follow the rules.  The consequences are not the same as punishment; they are ways to teach children acceptable behavior.  All through life there are consequences for behavior, and in our home children can learn that in a safe, respectful, and loving environment.

Parents can have a tendency to want to be their children’s friend, and to want their children always to “like them”.  Children don’t need their parents to be their friends.  They need their parents to be their parents.  You can have a close, loving and fun relationship with your child but there need to be really clear limits of behavior established.  Sometimes your children will be angry with you, or think you’re mean for saying no; but that should not dictate your behavior. Children ultimately need and want their parents to be in control. They will test limits but ultimately they too want to know their parents are in control, and feel unsafe when that does not seem to be the case.

Children need firm limits. As they grow older they also need to be given more control, freedom, and responsibility.  So in essence it is a balancing act.  When they are two years old it is all about limit setting. As they get older it becomes about teaching them their own problem solving skills, giving them a chance to take on responsibility and become accountable for their own behavior.

Empathetic Listening

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Being heard
is so close to being loved
that for the average person,
they are almost indistinguishable.

-David Augsberger

As I explore the concept of “Middle Ground” Parenting ©2013 I want to explore more deeply the idea of empathetic listening.  I see this as a key aspect of parenting effectively.  This is a huge topic and this post will just start to explore it.

When our children are infants we are very focused on listening because that’s really the only way we can know if there is something they need. We listen to their cries, their deep breathing of sleep, their coos when they are content.  We intuitively feel a sense of urgency to know what they are communicating and to try and meet those needs.  The baby begins to know that we love them and they can trust us because of this listening.

As children get older, they begin to develop gestures and then words to communicate what they need and want, we sometimes forget how important it is for us to keep listening.  And as they grow, what we are listening for is a bit different. We’ve moved beyond hunger for a feeding, a wet diaper, the need for holding and comfort.   The child is becoming a more complicated entity, they have needs and wants we no longer can or should meet immediately.  They are establishing their own independent little selves.  We have to keep them safe as they are moving around in the world and we have to set some limits to their behavior.

When we go beyond the basic needs of food, body and soothing, and get to situations where the child wants something they can’t have-we can listen for the feelings beneath their words.  It is our ability to listen, to understand, and be compassionate to their feelings, that is probably our most powerful and effective parenting tool.  They will feel understood and heard and loved, even as they are feeling more frustration, anger, and disappointment.  In time, we will help them to learn to name those feelings themselves, and better ways of expressing those feelings.

Somewhere around the age of 18 months children begin to develop more of a sense of the meaning of no.  You will see a child toddle to an outlet, turn around and look at you and then start to put their finger near it, you say “No” They are beginning to understand that there are things they won’t be allowed to do but they are going to keep testing those limits.  Also they don’t necessarily retain the concept, and we have to keep saying that “No” and most often have to simply remove them from unsafe situations, and distract them from those activities.

We really start beginning our limit setting/discipline with our children when they are about 2 years old.  Often around this time and for the next few years’ children continue testing the limits frequently.  They know they want things; they don’t really have the skills or the power to get them.  Often they don’t even know themselves what it is that they want.  They don’t have the ability to appropriately communicate their frustration, and the tantrums begin!

It is at this very early stage where we can start to actively practice those same attuned listening skills we used when our children were infants.  When a child begins to tantrum, or have a “melt down” one of the most powerful, disarming, effective tools we can use is to name the feeling behind their upset. 

Whether we, as adults think the reason behind their upset is justified or makes sense, the fact is that they are in distress.  If we say, “We’ve been at the park all morning, you’ve had long enough to play, or why are you giving mommy a hard time, I let you play for two hours, you know you’re tired and need your nap"-they will only get increasingly upset.

So when your two –four year old child suddenly starts to cry and flail, you can say, “Molly is angry, she wants to stay at the park and we have to go.  Its hard being angry.”  I am not suggesting that in that moment, the child will stop crying and say “thank you mother, you helped me identify my feelings, of course we need to go, its time for my nap.” You will probably have to pick them up, tears and flailing and all, and put them in the car.

But when you acknowledge your child’s feelings, even if you can’t change the outcome of leaving the park, they get the message, you are listening to them, you understand that they have feelings of frustration; you are compassionate to those feelings.  In some cases that feeling of being heard can be enough to diffuse the tantrum.

It can be helpful to think about this in terms of your own experience.  If you are disappointed because your partner forgot to acknowledge your birthday in the morning and they say, “Don’t be so dramatic, birthdays aren’t such a big deal for adults,” or “I’ve had a crazy day at work please don’t add to my stress.” How would you feel?  On the other hand if your partner said, “I’m sorry honey, it must have been disappointing that I didn’t say happy birthday-I love you and happy birthday.”- wouldn’t you feel a lot better?  You might feel heard and understood, and loved-even if your partner did something that upset you.

Sometimes identifying your child's specific feeling can be difficult, because the feelings are not directly related to the activity he is upset about.  He may still be holding on to hurt from a friend’s mean comment, or hasn’t had enough sleep.  The main task is to identify a feeling that seems reflected by the child’s behavior.  They can always correct you, and its still experienced as supportive.  Also at a later time you can look back at the incident and think about other emotional and or physical aspects that may have influenced the tantrum!

As you listen empathetically and name your child’s feelings, she begins to learn the skills to identify what she is feeling, and you will eventually teach her ways to communicate those feelings other than with tantrums.  In addition to that, you are modeling how to listen compassionately to and communicate with others effectively.

Empathetic listening isn’t a magic trick, or manipulation, it’s a way of connecting with your child, communicating that they are heard and loved, even when there is conflict.  This interaction is the building block for communication with your child all through life.  And it’s never to late to start.

"Good Enough" Parenting

When I had a 6-week-old infant and a 3-year-old son I started social work school.  It was challenging to parent young children and be in graduate school but I was fortunate to be able to do it part time, and like all parents I juggled my different commitments. 

In the mandatory Human Development class, which covered birth to death, I learned about all the major theories of child development.  It was daunting to be aware of all these important impacts of parenting while I was so busy juggling life with two young children.  So I vividly remember sighing a deep sigh of relief when we learned two aspects of child development profoundly reassuring and comforting: “good enough mothering”, and “necessary empathic failure”.

Donald W. Winnicott in The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Middlesex 1973) talked about the idea of “good enough” mothering.  He wrote specifically about mothering in the context of his times, which didn’t include the concept of fathers’ involvement or the idea of other caregivers.  I will use an expanded version of “good enough” parenting to include all of them. 

The idea is that there is no need or ultimately even no desire for parents to be perfect at what they do.  Parents need to be loving towards their children, to try and become attuned to their communications and needs, and of course to keep them safe.  However, parents can’t always succeed in anticipating needs and addressing them and more than that-they shouldn’t!

In fact it is when we are not able to meet every need, in the context of a safe and loving environment that the baby and then the young child begins to build important skills like soothing themselves and being able to fall asleep.  It allows them to be able to develop some age appropriate separation from their parents.  This leads to children learning to tolerate disappointment and develop problem-solving skills for themselves.  Heinz Kohut the founder of self-psychology referred to this concept as “necessary empathic failure”. 

When we are present and attuned most of the time, the child learns to trust that her parents will be there for her and that the world is a safe place. Then when she experiences some disappointment or mis-attunement in a given instance, she is able to trust that everything will ultimately be okay and in that context begin to develop her own skills in soothing herself.  Thus these lapses are necessary empathic failures.

In our culture today there is a strong tendency towards parents aiming for perfection, and for meeting children’s needs as fully and immediately as people.   This continues even after the infant years in the idea that children have to have the “important toys”, go to the best specific preschools, cultivate numerous extracurricular activities, do the best on standardized tests… the list is long and seemingly endless.  One of the sad by-products of this pressure is that parents judge themselves harshly if they feel they are not providing all these things. They can also put undue pressure on their children to always excel.

The reality is there is no way to be a perfect parent and in fact it would be detrimental to the child if we were perfect.  We need to have those small lapses in empathy and attunement in order that our children develop vital capabilities of self-soothing, learn how to tolerate disappointment and build problem solving skills.

With most of us juggling work, school, children, caring for elderly parents, community responsibilities, some of us single parenting, we can’t meet every need of our child.  We can take comfort in the fact that as long as we are loving, attentive when we can be, provide a safe environment, we are doing a good enough job.  Our children will grow, and thrive, and develop the needed skills to become safe, happy, independent adults.

Curiosity Helped the Parent

“Socrates told us, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.”
― Roger Ebert

In my last post I talked about “Middle Ground Parenting” (I may need to come up with a better name, I don’t mean to indicate mediocrity or settling in any way) by which I mean the ways in which we get to our desired parenting outcome: to help our children grow into responsible, mature, capable, happy adults.   The main principles are listening empathetically, setting appropriate limits and boundaries, using positive discipline, and spending quality time with our children.

So how do we actualize middle ground parenting? I started in my last entry with the parents need to exercise self-compassion.  The most important factor in child behavior is modeling.  Children end up acting the way they see us behave.  If we set a tone of self-compassion they are learning that one need not be perfect, everyone makes mistakes; that everyone deserves to be treated in a kind way, and that they are loved just as they are.

The next important concepts I want to emphasize are listening and curiosity. When our children are babies we learn to discern and attend to their needs by listening to their cries.  Over time we begin to notice how the cries sound when they are indicating hunger, sleepiness, boredom, and loneliness.  We learn to comfort and care for the child based on those signals.  The baby steadily comes to see the parents and caregivers in their lives as interested in them, and making every effort to try and meet their needs.  Developmental psychologists refer to this dynamic as “attunement”.  We can’t always be correct when we are discerning a baby’s communication, and we can’t always succeed in soothing them, but as Donald W. Winnicott writes in The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Middlesex 1973): we can do “good enough” at it.  I will return to the concept of “good enough” parenting-it is important and comforting!

These same listening skills-as well as noticing and curiosity about what the child is communicating- can guide us as parents all through their childhood and teens. When a one to two year old child is just starting to put together sounds, then words, then short phrases, we can listen to what they are trying to communicate and approach it with interest and curiosity.  Why is she repeating the sound gah so often? Is that her newfound way of communicating to us that she wants to be held?  How excited does she get when she says gah, and you give her a squeeze!

Children are always growing and changing.  When a toddler is repeatedly falling asleep while trying to eat her lunch, we can be curious and notice that she is now more active, doesn’t always take a morning nap and gets tired earlier.  We can adjust her meals and snacks accordingly to meet her new needs.  And she will feel better if she is able to eat enough to fuel all that activity.

When a preschooler is always falling down, bumping into things, and crying at a certain time in the evening, we can notice, be curious about that, and try adjusting her bedtime accordingly.  She will have a more pleasant experience of bedtime, as tears don’t always precede it.

When our school age child seems like they are always being unduly mean to their siblings, and having frequent meltdowns, it can drive us crazy.  We often jump to the step of punishment, and often the punishment does not turn out to be effective.  I am not at all suggesting that parents tolerate that behavior, but as we set appropriate limits we can take a step back and notice the patterns of behavior.  When is this behavior happening? What is going on before and after it?  We can acknowledge our own anger and frustration with the behavior and also apply curiosity.  This may lead us to a larger picture of what is behind the behavior in order to come up with effective strategies to deal with it.  I will address this approach more fully in later postings.

Parents aren’t magicians or mind readers.  We can’t know all our child’s needs and even always understand the sounds and words they are using to communicate them.  But we can establish a pattern of being curious about our children, listening carefully to the words they say to us, noticing the behaviors they are exhibiting and then adapting our approach accordingly.  Listening, noticing and being curious will lead towards parents who know how to communicate and children feeling heard.

Parenting Goals

In my first blog entry I wrote about finding a middle ground in parenting, somewhere between overly involved and protective (helicopter parenting), and rigid, oppressive parenting, (as described in The Tiger Mom).  Last time I addressed the importance of being compassionate towards ourselves.  If we don’t love ourselves, it is hard to authentically love others.

Now I want to take a step back.  If we are thinking about any important goal, and are working to find the most effective ways to approach getting to those goals, we often start with defining what the desired outcome is that we are looking for.  When we explore approaches to parenting, we want to have pleasant, peaceful loving day-to-day lives (short term goals) and we are also trying to raise children who grow into successful adults. (long term goals)  The long term parenting outcome we are looking for is children who grow into successful adults.

We all have different ideas and expectations for our children about what success looks like based on our own history and culture-it’s a very personal thing.  But over all we want children who feel good about themselves and behave in a kind, compassionate and respectful way towards others.  We want them to care about family and friends, and strive to have strong such relationships in their lives.  We want them to be curious and interested in the world around them.  We want them to be able to work hard and be successful at work, to be resilient and to be capable of problem solving.  We want children who engage in their larger community and help others that are in need.

Every parent has their own unique hopes and dreams about their children but using this definition as an approximate desired outcome we are looking to achieve, how can we get there? What can we do as parents to help our children grow into responsible, mature, capable, happy adults?

I believe that “middle ground” parenting approach is the answer.  We need to be sensitive to self-esteem issues, by setting limits without shaming our children. We need to keep our children physically and emotionally safe but within that safe space allow them to try things, to experience disappointment, and sometimes to fail.  We need to provide a warm nurturing environment, but encourage independence.  I believe we do all this by listening empathetically, setting appropriate limits and boundaries, using positive discipline, and spending quality time with our children.  In this blog I will continue to explore how these approaches lead to both a more pleasant day-to-day life currently and also lead to the qualities we want to see in our children as they grow.